Every time Baylor football coach Art Briles returns to Houston these days, he has a new entry on his résumé.

Three years ago, the former University of Houston coach was celebrating Baylor's first Heisman Trophy winner, Robert Griffin III, when he came back to town as a finalist for the Paul "Bear" Bryant Award as college football's coach of the year.

Wednesday, Briles returns as a finalist for the Bryant Award, which will be presented during a 7 p.m. dinner at the Royal Sonesta, as coach of Baylor's first Big 12 championship team and its first team to compete in a major bowl in more than 30 years.

"This (being a finalist) means a lot to me," Briles, 58, said. "All of these things are team awards. Just being mentioned in the same sentence with Bear Bryant is a victory enough for me."

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Briles also arrives, as hard as it might be to believe for those who recall his days as one of Texas' most successful high school coaches, as one of his profession's old hands.

He is the second-oldest coach in the Big 12 behind Kansas State's Bill Snyder, and with Mack Brown's resignation at Texas, only TCU's Gary Patterson has a longer tenure as a major-college head coach in Texas than Briles' 12 years (2003-07 at UH, since 2008 at Baylor).

Regardless of Wednesday night's awards outcome, he has things he wants to do as he approaches his 60s. He wants to win a major bowl, one element lacking in the wake of the Bears' 52-42 loss to Central Florida in the Fiesta Bowl, and he dares to dream he can bring a national title to the banks of the Brazos River.

"That's the goal," he said. "That is our plan. We are vying for dominance. You play high school football to win state championships and the NFL to win a Super Bowl. It's pretty simple. That's the next step.

"Of course, it's easier said than done. We have a lot of bridges to cross, and one of them is being consistent. That's our conversation right now. We did not finish (the 2013 season) as we should, and that is our motivation."

Those are worthy goals, but Briles does not have to attain them to leave a lasting impression on Texas football. Fans in Texas and around the country take the passing game for granted (11 of 42 NFL players who threw for at least 1,000 yards in 2013 hail from the state, led by Drew Brees, Andrew Luck, Ryan Tannehill and Andy Dalton).

QB renaissance

But it remains a fact that Texas high schools in large numbers didn't start throwing the ball until it was proved you could win championships doing so, and the first coach to prove that was Briles.

After tinkering with a diversified offense in the 1980s with an undermanned team in Hamlin, Briles moved in 1988 to Stephenville, which at the time was known primarily as one of Brownwood's patsies during Gordon Wood's run of seven state titles in 26 seasons.

Briles flipped the field in a manner that might be unprecedented in Texas football history, leading Stephenville to four state or division titles in the 1990s and producing five all-state quarterbacks.

He left Stephenville to coach running backs for Mike Leach at Texas Tech for three seasons before coming to UH, where the Cougars went to four bowls in five seasons, and moving to Baylor prior to UH's Texas Bowl appearance after the 2007 season.

Success as NFL QBs

Leach and others helped refine Briles' offense, but it is in some ways the same attack that helped revolutionize Texas high school football in the 1990s and clear the way for Texas' run of successful NFL quarterbacks.

"You could go to Branndon Stewart (his first all-state quarterback at Stephenville in 1993) and show him our offense now, and he would probably understand 20 percent of it immediately," Briles said. "It's different because defenses are different, but some of the formations and terminology are the same."

Baylor this season led the Football Bowl Subdivision in total offense (618.8 yards per game) and scoring (52.4 points per game), but the Bears' Big 12 success hinged in large part on its improved defense, which allowed 344 yards and 21.2 points per game after giving up 502 yards and 37.2 points per game in 2012.

Credit to defense

"(Defense) is why we won the championship," he said. "We've always been dynamic on offense. What we were able to do on defense elevated us to a championship level. And now that we have done it and understand what it takes, it gives us a chance to keep doing it."

With this year's title, the productivity of his offense, Baylor's defensive improvement under coordinator Phil Bennett and the debut of Baylor's 45,000-seat, $260 million McLane Stadium across the Brazos from campus, Briles believes he will recruit from strength in years to come.

"We let the facts speak for themselves," he said. "We have proved that we are in position to be a force to be reckoned with. What we're shooting for is not a pipe dream. It's happening in stages as we speak.

"The stadium will be a landmark, and it's as important to Central Texas as it is to Baylor. It has transformed the riverfront to where you will have high-end restaurants, condos and pedestrian walkways, to the point it will be a smaller version of the (San Antonio) River Walk."

Coveted coach

But Briles' commitment to Baylor became a topic of speculation late in the season, He agreed in November to a new contract through 2023 that will pay him at least $4 million per year, according to published reports, but his name cropped up frequently in late December as a candidate for college (Texas) and NFL (Washington) coaching positions.

"All you want is a chance," he said. "I couldn't have gotten the Houston job coming out of Stephenville, but I had a three-year buffer (at Texas Tech), which made them feel good about hiring me at Houston.

"That's the way the business is right now. I coached for a lot of years making less than a six-figure salary, and when I took the Houston job it was one of the lowest-paid head coaches in the country. It's what you do with the chance that determines the outcome."

Having sold Baylor on his qualifications, Briles sold his players on Baylor, said junior quarterback Bryce Petty.

"We all took a chance on Baylor," he said. "That's where the vision of coach Briles really took off. It all started with him."

Double his pleasure

By winning a Big 12 title to go with his high school championships at Stephenville, Briles is in select company in Texas football history. Only Corky Nelson (1973 Tyler John Tyler, 1983 North Texas) comes to mind as having won a state title and a college conference title as a coach for schools in Texas.

"You see how the game has been transformed since we started doing things (in the passing game) in the early 1990s and how high school has changed and how it moved into colleges and the NFL," he said. "We have to continue. When you relax, you get passed. We are always going to push the accelerator and be on the cutting edge. Those are the keys."